Maison Margiela / Fall 2011 RTW

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The biggest insult to a Maison Martin Margiela runway collection is that it’s wearable. Just the suggestion of pretty and the staff cringes. But, sorry, the clothes that the design team sent out for fall were both.

The concept was dresses that looked like coats. Or was it coats that looked like dresses? Sometimes there were dresses that looked like dresses under coats that looked like coats. The bottom line is coats and dresses, that’s mainly what this was about. First, the coats. They were to the knee or just below, in clean, solid-color fabrics, and for all the zippers horizontal at the hips or vertical up the sides, they still looked clean. The Margiela trick was that they were unzipped halfway down the back to look from behind like undone dresses with slips showing, but the slips were the dresses. They were fairly simple too, matte and patent leather lingerie-inspired numbers in deep raspberry and light blue and a lovely pastel floral. In fact, all the colors—pinks, red, purple, and green—felt fresh. And about halfway through the show (paced at a death march, but more on that later) a light, blue knit cardigan popped up. From the runway it looked to be the sort of knit cardigan even your grandmother would recognize. Then there were some sweatshirts with long skirts. Again, simple, save for maybe a pocket flap left open to reveal a different fabric.

The problem was that these clothes belong in the commercial collection, not on the runway. There was no magic to the show, none of that provocative Margiela amusement—wacky as it could be—that has been increasingly missing from this brand since Margiela the man left the house. Okay, so there was one look that appeared to be a goddessy evening dress but was actually just a top with a long drape in front. That’s an illusion, but not a particularly clever one. The models’ snail pace only made the show feel more tedious. Appealing as they were, these were not clothes that required a whole lot of time to appreciate.